When Edie Ledwell, co-creator of a popular animated web series called The Ink Black Heart, approaches Cormoran Strike for help identifying a troll who has been conducting a years-long harassment campaign against her, Strike turns her down. Weeks later, Edie is murdered inside Highgate Cemetery, and Strike and Robin Ellacott begin an investigation that leads them into the anonymous, vicious, and legally murky world of online harassment.
The sixth Cormoran Strike novel is the series' most technically ambitious and contemporary, conducting its investigation partly through text messages, forums, chat logs, and social media exchanges that are reproduced in the text. The killer is hidden among a cast of online personas — none of them using their real names — and the challenge of identifying real people behind pseudonyms while navigating a community that has convinced itself that public harassment is legitimate criticism gives the novel its distinctive texture.
Published in September 2022 and running to over 1,000 pages, The Ink Black Heart is the longest novel in the series. The online harassment world it depicts drew significant commentary on publication, with readers noting its parallels to real-world fan culture, parasocial celebrity dynamics, and the legal immunity frequently enjoyed by anonymous abuse campaigns.